Let’s face it, there are a whole lot of really cool WordPress plugins out there that will spice up your blog in no time. But I wanted to write this article to pin point a list of WordPress plugins that are pretty essential and that you shouldn’t be without.

In my opinion, some of these plugins should just come with the standard installation of WordPress on your server. Don’t worry, you won’t miss a single important plugin after reading this post.

Just so you know, all of these plugins can be installed from your WordPress back office. Just go to the left hand side and find Plugins, then Add New. Make sure the plugin name matches the author, otherwise you will be getting a completely different plugin than what I’m talking about.

14 WordPress plugins you should have installed:

All in One SEO Pack by Michael Torbert – This is one of the essential plugins I believe should automatically come with your WordPress installation. This plugin allows you to give a unique title, description, and keywords for every single page and blog post on your WordPress site.

Google XML Sitemaps by Arne Brachhold -Yet another essential plugin that should come automatically installed with WordPress in my opinion. This excellent plugin not only generates your sitemap for you, but it also pings out to the Search Engines for you every time you do a new post on your blog.

WP-SpamFree by Scott Allen -You probably won’t see the need for this plugin right away, but it is another essential plugin for your WordPress blog. It stops all the spammers and bots from attacking your blog with fake, generated comments full of really bad ads.

Contextual Related Posts by Ajay D’Souza -This plugin automatically sorts all your posts for you. After someone visits one of your posts, they can then see a list of related posts that the reader may also be interested in checking out as well.

Get Recent Comments by Krischan Jodies -This plugin may not be necessary as some WordPress blogs might already have a recent comments script already included with their theme. But if not, this plugin will get all your recent comments that you can show to your readers in the sidebar or wherever you would like to show it.

Kahi’s Notes by Peter Kahoun -This plugin is for you back office only. It just helps to be able to take quick notes on tasks related to your blog or future posts you may want to write about.

Sociable by Blogplay -This plugin allows your readers to easily tweet and share your blog posts if they really like them. Makes it easy to print and e-mail posts as well.

Twitbar Widget by C. Finegan – This is a simple plugin that allows you to put your latest twitter tweets on your blog’s side bar. Just another way to get traffic to previous blog posts.

WordPress Popular Posts by Héctor Cabrera – This plugin tracks hits and comments on posts to determine which blog posts on your site are the most popular. It’s a way for you to see what posts are your best work and displays them on your sidebar.

WP Greet Box by Thaya Kareeson – This plugin tracks where your visitors come from and politely asks them to subscribe. For example, if a visitor comes from Google, it will say, “Welcome fellow Googler, please subscribe.” You can personalize the greetings any way you would like to.

Follow Me by Brian Chappell – This plugin makes it very easy for readers to follow you on various social networks without taking up a lot of space on your blog. There are similar plugins, you just need to find the best one for you.

2 Comments to “List of 14 WordPress plugins your blog should have installed”

Thanks for linking to my article about why you should not use WP-SpamFree. Apparently its problems have only grown since I wrote the article, so it’s an especially bad idea to use it if you’re on a shared web hosting service.